Transcript of "Content Management System Comparison Report"

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Introduction
As an active and dynamic animal shelter in the community, we know how important it
is for you to keep your information organized and current. With a well-oiled system to
manage your files, you’re free to give the best care possible to the pets you house and
the best customer service to future pet parents. We've prepared a consultation
presentation that will compare and contrast two Content Management Systems (CMS),
Joomla and Plone. We've reviewed dozens of CMSs to find the best options for you and
your organization's needs. Based upon your organization's request for proposal, we'll
present the following attributes for each CMS:
• Cost and Hosting
o The ability to be hosted with a variety of host providers
• Ease of Installation
• Ease of Use
• Need for Technical Support
• Multiple Content Creators and Security
• Training, Instruction, and Assessment
o The ability to deliver assessment and receive and store data
o Overall effectiveness as a training platform
• User Feedback
o The ability to receive user feedback
• Consistency
o The ability to maintain a consistent look throughout the site
Cost and Hosting
As a non-profit organization, it's vital to reduce costs at every opportunity. Information
management is no exception. Although you have the option of hiring consultants,
trainers, or selecting a costly host, you’re able to use either CMS without these
expenses.
Both Plone and Joomla are free open source systems. That means accessing,
downloading, and registering for both products is absolutely free. They are considered
‘open source’ because their source code is made freely available to anyone who wishes
to use it. You can change their code any way you like.

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However, you may need to take other costs into consideration. For each system, you
will need to select hosting which varies depending on which hosting company you
select. Of course, if you have your own server, you can host either system there. Both
Plone and Joomla have a large community of users at all levels of technical expertise. If
you need support in building your website, you will be able to find it in the online
community at Plone.net. However, you do have the option of investing in training for
your staff, which could be an additional expense for either system. You can also hire a
consultant to develop the site so you only have to address content maintenance issues.
Ease of Installation
With the constant hustle and bustle of visitors and volunteers frequenting your animal
shelter, ease of use is a must! A CMS that is easy to use will save you time, and energy
as you get your new system started and running. We know you can’t afford to loose
valuable time trying to figure out and troubleshoot your new system – you need to use
that time to match pets with new parents!
Both Plone and Joomla are easy to install.
To install Plone, you will download the Plone Installer (available for a variety of
operating systems) and follow its prompts to complete the installation. To install Plone,
first you will choose the components you want to be installed, then create an
administrative account. Plone will give you a list of items to be installed on your
computer, so take a moment to review it before beginning the installation. That is all
there is to it. (Cooper, 2004)
Browser installation is the easiest way to install Joomla. The system will take care of
much of the work for you, starting with a pre-installation check for the required
hardware and software settings. Once the system check is complete, you will be asked
to accept the license, and from there the actual installation will begin. To install Joomla,
you will need to know your Host Name, MySQL user name, password and table prefix.
Then you will chose the name of your site, confirm the site URL and path and begin the
installation. You will download a zip file to your system and then upload the files
following on-screen prompts.(Webb, 2009)
Ease of Use
Once you have your CMS installed, you’re ready to manipulate the open source code
we mentioned earlier. Another feature of open sourced systems is that anyone – even
you – can develop their own code and share it with the entire CMS community! Neither
CMS system is likely to meet your needs “out of the box.” Rather, you will need to add
tools and extensions for inventory databases, assessment, contact forms and so on –
many of which came from each CMS community. Both systems offer free add-ons;
refer to the matrix included in this document for a sample of these services.

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This is where some fundamental differences come into play.
Although Plone is easy for your content administrators to use, it is a difficult system to
learn because of its complex set of options and settings. Whereas, once you become
familiar with Joomla’s terminology and structure, it’s comparatively straightforward to
create effective websites. However, creating site structure and navigation isn’t as
intuitive as it could be (idealware.org). Between the two, Plone has a steeper learning
curve (idealware.org, 2009).
Need for Technical Support
System updates add features, address security issues, and fix bugs. Updates are vital
components of presenting a successful website and managing your content effectively.
When selecting a CMS, it’s important to consider the frequency and complexity of
system updates. Although Plone is a complex system to upgrade, it doesn’t issue new
upgrades often. Joomla has a simpler upgrade process, but also doesn’t issue new
upgrades often.
Support for all CMS systems is largely dependent upon the online community. In the
past few years, consulting and development firms have also become options. Both
systems have robust developer and user communities with free support available from
community-centered and third party sources (idealware.org). You will also have a large
source of support from your local library or bookstore for either CMS.
Multiple Content Creators and Security
Your animal shelter demands a need to separate content to protect privacy and
scheduling information. You may also want some of the animal’s information to be
public and some to be private. To use one CMS to facilitate these multiple types on
content and access levels, Plone and Joomla use systems that allow multiple content
creators while you still have control over who sees what and who contributes to which
area of your site!
Plone supports multiple content creators. Users can establish "members," which are
users with certain levels of permission to access information. Members have their own
personal workspace folder under their name. You can also create groups, in which all
members have the same level of permission as others in that group. The group would
then get a workspace folder. The group essentially functions as a single member.

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Plone has a security tab that allows you to control the level of access for users at each
role. There are two categories of user roles:
• Anonymous is automatically assigned to anyone who accesses the server
• Authenticated refers to any user who has provided the appropriate credentials.
Authenticated roles include:
o Members are any users upon registration. A member can create content in
their personal workspace and submit it for review, but cannot approve it
for publication
o Owners are creators of segments of content. Owners can edit or
manipulate the content they own (there can be several owners assigned
to different content)
o Reviewers have the ability to promote or deny a request for publication of
content
o Managers are users with full control over the site
Joomla also supports multiple content creators. In Joomla, there are seven user groups:
• Registered
• Author
• Editor
• Publisher
• Manager
• Administrator
• Super Administrator
There are also different access levels. Modules, articles, categories, sections and menu
items can be published to one of these three levels:
• Public (anyone can access)
• Registered (anyone with a user account can access)
• Special (only author, editor, publisher, manager, administrator or super
administrator can access)
Training, Instruction, and Assessment
Plone has been used effectively for instruction. There are tools available for managing
eLearning on Plone websites. Such tools can help you with:
• Creation of a collaborative environment for learners and instructors
• Creating ways to facilitate submission
• Marking and release of results for online assessments
• Management of courses
Utah State University developed eduCommons using Plone. eduCommons is used for
OpenCourseWare by Notre Dame University and Yale University and others. For the
sort of training that the animal shelter will need to do, instructing volunteers and new
pet owners, OpenCourseWare is far more than you need. However, it does illustrate the
effectiveness of Plone as an instructional platform. (Lambert & Ray, 2007)

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Joomla does not appear to be used as widely as Plone for education and training. That
does not mean that it is ineffective, only that Plone is a more conventional choice for
training. However, because so much of the functionality of an open source CMS comes
from its community of user-developers, you may find the Plone community more
helpful when it comes to training staff, volunteers and adoptees.
Joomla also allows assessment tools to be added to your site, but as with Plone, you
must either write the tools yourself to look to third-party products that fit your
requirements. (The Learning Retention Company, for example, has created a Joomla
LMS for eLearning which could then be customized to meet the needs of the shelter.
(www.learningreinforced.com)
User Feedback
Plone allows you to receive user feedback. Its extensions allow you to receive feedback
in a variety of formats: through comments on the page (which you can moderate if
necessary), email and RSS subscriptions, polls, contact forms, and so on. Once again,
you can create these or download pre-made extensions by other Plone users and adjust
them to give you the exact characteristics you need.
Joomla also allows you to receive user feedback. Free add-ons allow you to add review
acceptance to existing articles and decide which categories you want to include in the
review functionality. It is professionally designed and can be further customized by
modifying the theme files. You have options for ratings, listing submissions, custom
fields, editor reviews, and more.
Consistency
Plone gives you the ability to maintain a consistent look throughout the site. Plone uses
templates that are the same on each page of the site. Updates that you might make to
one page will be automatically updated on each page where that content occurs. If you
change your template, the change will also be reflected on each page of the site, and all
of your content will automatically adjust to the new layout, so you don't have to fix
inconsistencies yourself.
All extensions built specifically for Joomla are able to interact with each other because
they use a common API – Application Programming Interface. Joomla comes with
three basic templates to organize your site, but to make it stand out, it is a good idea to
look for a template that has a distinctive look for the shelter. There are hundreds of pre-
made templates available for download (most don't cost anything) or you can learn to
build your own custom template.
Changing templates is easy in Joomla - you just activate the new template and all of
your content automatically formats to the new template. If you change a bit of
information that affects all the pages on your site, you only need to make the change
once, and Joomla will update all the pages where that information occurs, so you don't
need to do it by hand on each page.

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Conclusion/Recommendations
Both Plone and Joomla are open source software - meaning that they are free to
download and non-proprietary, so you can make any changes to the software that you
see fit. Although the software itself is free, you may want to take into consideration
your own skill with the CMS you choose. Do you have someone on staff or a volunteer
who is good with coding and scripting and can customize your site, or will you need to
out source customization to a developer or consultant? Plone and Joomla will work for
users of all levels "out of the box," but in order to accomplish specific tasks, such as
keeping a database of animals and their health care records, you will either need to hire
a developer or invest the time and effort necessary to learn how to customize your site
on your own.
Many, if not most host providers will host Plone and Joomla sites. Both CMSs are in
widespread use.
Both Plone and Joomla are difficult in this sense. They are both so flexible and so
customizable that it is hard to tell you exactly what they do. Both will function “out of
the box”, but both will also need some customization to get it to do the things that we
have listed. For that you need people with the right skills. The answer to the question
“does X do Y?” is yes, but you need to figure out how. Your need for technical support
will depend largely on your technical skill. Both Joomla and Plone have large
supportive communities of users and developers who are willing and even eager to help
other users with troubleshooting. The difference between the two CMSs on this point is
probably too small to be a deciding factor.
So far, Plone and Joomla look pretty similar.
Plone Joomla
Cost
Free to download and use,
may require external
consulting
Free to download and use, may
require external consulting
Features and
Flexibility
Allows for a large number of
add-ons
Allows for a large number of add-
ons
Multiple Content
Creators
Supports multiple content
creators
Supports multiple content creators
Training,
Instruction and
Assessment
Effective for instruction,
allows assessment tools
Effective for instruction, allows
assessment tools
Consistency
Templates ensure
consistency on each page
Templates ensure consistency on
each page
Installation
Easy to install without
technical expertise
Easy to install without technical
expertise

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Clipboard No Yes
Content Staging No Free Add On
Package Deployment No Yes
Trash Yes Free Add On
Web Statistics Yes Free Add On
Web-based Translation Management Free Add On Yes
Workflow Engine No Yes
Interoperability Joomla! 1.5.10 Plone 3.0
iCal No Free Add On
WAI Compliant No Yes
WebDAV Support No Yes
XHTML Compliant No Yes
Flexibility Joomla! 1.5.10 Plone 3.0
Multi-lingual Content Free Add On Yes
Multi-lingual Content Integration Free Add On Yes
Multi-Site Deployment Free Add On Yes
Built-in Applications Joomla! 1.5.10 Plone 3.0
Contact Management Yes Free Add On
Database Reports Free Add On Yes
Document Management Free Add On Yes
Events Calendar Free Add On Yes
Events Management Free Add On Yes
FAQ Management Yes Free Add On
File Distribution Free Add On Yes
HTTP Proxy No Free Add On
In/Out Board No Free Add On
Mail Form Yes Free Add On
My Page / Dashboard No Yes
Photo Gallery Free Add On Yes
Polls Yes Free Add On
Site Map Free Add On Yes
Time Tracking No Free Add On
Web Services Front End Yes No
Commerce Joomla! 1.5.10 Plone 3.0
Affiliate Tracking Free Add On No
Wish Lists Free Add On No
(Source: http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix)
This chart allows you to see clearly many of the features that are available on each
CMS. This is not an exhaustive list. The features that the two CMSs had in common
have been omitted in order to see the distinctions more clearly.

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Plone (the column on the right) offers many more features than Joomla. Many of the
features that come pre-installed on Plone are available only as add-ons in Joomla, and
many of Plone's features (either pre-installed or add-ons) are not available at all on
Joomla, such as drag-and-drop, undo, spell check and problem notification.
Based on this, we recommend that you choose Plone as the CMS for P.A.W.S. Animal
Shelter website. Although we have no doubt that you would be happy with Joomla, as
are thousands of other Joomla users worldwide, Plone's stock of features may prove
useful in creating your website, and will give you greater flexibility to make your
website what you want it to be.
Sources:
Cooper, C. (2004). Building Websites with Plone: An in-depth and comprehensive
guide to the Plone content management system. Birmingham, UK: Packt Publishing.
Glossary. (2010). Retrieved May 01, 2010 from Information Technology John Hopkins
Institutions: http://it.jhu.edu/glossary/mno.html.
idealware. (2009). Retrieved May 01, 2010 from Comparing Open Source Content
Management Systems: http://www.idealware.org/sites/idealware.org/files/
idealware_comparing_os_cms_report.pdf.
Lambert, B. & Ray. D. (2007). Plone in Education: A Case Study of the Use of Plone
and Educational Content. Retrieved from: http://www.coactivate.org/projects/plone-
conference-2007/presentations/plone-in-education_-a-case-study-of-the-use-of-plone-
and-educational-content-2014-site.pdf.
Web, C. (2009). Beginning Joomla! Web Site Development. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley
Publishing.
http://www.learningreinforced.com
http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix
http://plone.net/